Siôn Parkinson is an artist working with sound and performance.
Though trained as a sculptor at Central Saint Martins and The Slade, after being invited to perform at Cafe Oto by his former tutor Phyllida Barlow in 2010, he has since made music the focus of his art. He is due to receive his PhD in composition and sound studies from the University of Leeds for his research on music and malodours, investigating what our perception of ‘stinks’, both real and hallucinated, can tell us about the act of listening.
Animals and other non-humans often feature in Siôn’s music as a pretext to consider our own empathy, disgust, or disregard with the natural world. Recent work is informed by his passion for mushrooms, particularly the stinkhorn, a phallic, foul-smelling fungus that mimics the odour of dung and rotting meat which it uses to attract flies to help disperse its spores. A short animation, Stinkhorn, made with artist Richard Whitby, was commissioned by LUX and BBC Scotland and broadcast on BBC4 in Spring 2020, and a series of musical works followed shortly after.
www.ftn-books.com has one Parkinson publication available.
